Harper channels Teflon Jean in crisis mode

Jean Chretien faced a lot of scandals in a decade in office. Constituency favours, “billion dollar boondoggles” at HRDC (remember Jane Stewart?) and finally Adscam, the monster scandal of them all.

But the former prime minister faced every communications crisis in in the same style: with a smile and a shrug and never a hint of uncertainty. He never let the media see him sweat, never admitted a mistake. It was the kind of performance that convinced many Western Canadians that the federal government was run by a bunch of entrenched power-brokers in Quebec and Ontario — and this sort of thing wouldn’t happen when they took power.

Well, they got power. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has the Western bonafides and, on paper, the ideological purity that makes him different. But with the accreting Senate scandal, Harper appears to be displaying a sort of nostalgia for Chretien’s negation skills as he attempts to deflect all criticism and feign curiosity over the mounting media interest in the story of his wayward senators.

The story may have morphed from an expense claim investigation to a potential abuse of power — but it’s still being treated as a bungled, third-rate robbery.

So far Harper has worked to steer the story away from any hint of a cover-up, concentrating instead on the alleged deficiencies of his caucus members. Much of the rest of that caucus would like to know just why Senator Mike Duffy received a hefty payday loan from the PM’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright. The backbench malcontents are also wondering about Senator Pamela Wallin’s travel expenses.

The story may have morphed from an expense claim investigation to a potential abuse of power — but it’s still being treated as a bungled, third-rate robbery.

But what’s really worrying Harper this week is how many of his MPs are wondering what he knew and when he knew it. Duffy and Wallin have been thrown overboard. Now Nigel Wright is gone too — his pockets too deep and his political instincts too shallow. But what did Stephen Harper know? After setting the record straight for the caucus and doubtless dressing down anyone who may be taking this story too seriously, Harper will be off to South America in pursuit of another trade deal.

For him, à la Chretien in containment mode, it is still business as usual.

It was so last year in the midst of the troublesome robocall controversy. But this Senate mess is clearly something else again — where the bad judgment was exercised not by overzealous party protégés but seasoned political veterans who could be never be accused of lacking political acumen.

Harper has never made a thorough attempt at the open and transparent communication that every democratic government claims it desires and promises to deliver. His communications department has always served as a non-communications department, where the message is not just spun but is sometimes spun only to the right people.

But the prime minister does know how to manage the resources around him. Though on the one hand he demonstrates a fierce fixation on controlling his working environment by monitoring the potentially subversive opinions of his MPs and stage-managing every element of every announcement, he is quite capable of seeming unaware of inappropriate behaviour in his midst.

Well, Conservative supporters are frankly hoping that Stephen Harper did not know that Duffy was offered a way out, did not know that his chief of staff offered an emergency loan to bury the issue. But it’s difficult to fathom how someone who is so insistent upon knowing everything could have been left ignorant in this case.

How is this playing in Calgary, Canada’s capital of conservatism? Here in the oilpatch, the stalwart party supporters have been with Harper throughout his political odyssey. They remember him as a legislative assistant to Reform MP Deborah Grey. They fondly recall his election in the city as a Reform MP himself.

But there also was a time when Harper quit the Reform caucus, came back to Calgary and assumed the presidency of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC). Calgary Tories remember that too. Their dollars helped finance the right-of-centre political action committee. The NCC, under Harper and before, decried backroom deals in Ottawa, suspicious money changing hands and political elites bailing each other out — all the putrid discharge from politics-as-usual as dominated by Ontario and Quebec.

Don’t count Harper out. He well understands the gravity of the situation, the potential consequences. But he won’t let on. His gut reaction, like Chretien before him, will be to expect this issue to go away. There have been resignations and blame has been assigned. Harper would like to just march on.

Though Canadians seem to have developed a taste for this style of governing, it may well prove insufficient this time. Ignoring this problem isn’t going to make it disappear. Even if the prime minister thinks himself above reproach, he must still explain who knew what and when.

If he doesn’t think the country requires full disclosure, the true believers in Calgary — the ones who said a Conservative government would behave differently from the Liberals — certainly deserve an explanation.

David Krayden was raised on Vancouver Island and has written extensively on Western political issues over the years, including time as a columnist for the Calgary Herald. Krayden was the host of Calgary’s Liberty Today radio program and most recently worked as an editor for Sun News television. Krayden was a public affairs officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force and spent almost a decade on Parliament Hill as a communications staffer.

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